Limit this search to....

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier Bound for Schoo Edition
Contributor(s): Beah, Ishmael (Author)
ISBN: 1417828455     ISBN-13: 9781417828456
Publisher: Turtleback Books
OUR PRICE:   $24.31  
Product Type: Prebound - Other Formats
Published: August 2008
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Annotation: This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war, goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
- History | Africa - West
Dewey: B
Lexile Measure: 920
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.3" W x 8" (0.65 lbs) 229 pages
Themes:
- Chronological Period - 1990's
- Cultural Region - West Africa
Accelerated Reader Info
Quiz #: 112792
Reading Level: 6.1   Interest Level: Upper Grades   Point Value: 13.0
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
""My new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life.
"Why did you leave Sierra Leone?"
"Because there is a war."
"You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?"
"Yes, all the time."
"Cool.""You should tell us about it sometime."
"Yes, sometime.""
"
This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.
What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.
In "A Long Way Gone," Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.